Paul Gauguin

French post-impressionist painter (1848–1903). Central subject of Carbone's *Flesh of Images* ch. 2 ("It Takes a Long Time to Become Wild"). Although Merleau-Ponty himself never focused philosophical attention on Gauguin, Carbone argues that Gauguin's Polynesian painting performs a "deconstruction of the Christian flesh" that answers Derrida's charge that MP's "flesh of the world" smuggles in Christian semantics. Gauguin's detour through stone and wood, his polytheist-animist theosophic syncretism, and his restoration of opacity to skin — all conspire to give chair a primitive-sacral register that is not Christian-incarnational. He thus functions for Carbone as the painterly witness to MP's late ontology, a companion to Cézanne and Klee.

Key Points

  • "Sculptural flesh": In Gauguin's Polynesian paintings, the Tahitian women's bodies "are sculptural bodies" — "perfect idol" (Tehamana), "sculptural form" (King Pomare's woman in Noa Noa), "modelled by a sculptor" (Vahine no te tiare). In a letter of March 1899 Gauguin writes of "rigidity" and "indescribably antique, august, and religious" rhythm of "animal shapes."
  • The woman turning into a statue: In "Miscellaneous Things" Gauguin announces a never-executed painting: "The main figure will be a woman turning into a statue, still remaining alive yet becoming an idol." The program: pursue flesh to its impossible con-fusion with the sculptural, to win back primitive sacrality.
  • Opacity vs. veil: Gauguin gives skin back its opacity — as in Tehamana's dark body in Manao Tupapau (1892) or Manet's Olympia (invoked as analogue). Opacity reunifies skin with flesh; contrast with Christian incarnat (complexion) where the skin is a veil presenting-while-concealing a withdrawing divine light.
  • Cultural syncretism / theosophic inclination: Gauguin's "cultural syncretism," "spirit of theosophy," and "fundamental unity of all religions" (manuscript L'esprit moderne et le catholicisme) align him with polytheism and against Christian monotheism, even where Christian references appear in his paintings.
  • Eclecticism, not pure primitivism: "Daumier meets Giotto in Japan" — Gauguin's inspiration sources include Greek polytheist art (Eh quoi, tu es jalouse? 1892, based on Dionysos), Buddhist sculpture, Japanese prints, Breton Calvary scenes — alongside Tahitian sources. This contrasts with cubist primitivism which used primitivism "as an arm" against the very ambiguities Gauguin cultivated.
  • Philosophical figure of primitivism: Carbone reads Gauguin's work as a philosophical figure of primitivism akin to — but not identical with — MP's "flesh of the world." Both are attempts to draw from a primitive sacrality that includes animate and inanimate, without turning God into an invention to solve "unfathomable mystery."

Connections to MP's Late Ontology

The Detour Through Stone or Wood

Gauguin's characteristic move is a detour from the pictorial to the sculptural. The Noa Noa manuscript, the 1899 letter to Fontainas, and "Miscellaneous Things" all contain this figure. What is the detour for?

Carbone's answer (carbone-2015-flesh-of-images ch. 2): to give skin back its opacity. Christian painting (in Nancy's analysis via Visitation, The Look of the Portrait) makes the skin a veil — illuminated by the hidden divine light, presenting-while-concealing. The Christian incarnat is inherently veil-structured.

Gauguin's opaque skin refuses this: by resembling stone (Tehamana = "perfect idol"; "carnal kinship" with temple pediments), the skin becomes dense, not veil-like. And a dense skin is unified with flesh — not an envelope over a hidden interiority.

"to give back to skin such an opacity means to give back to skin its unity with flesh, thus denying the skin's status of mere 'envelope' of bodies from which [. . .] most of modern painting tried to move away." (carbone-2015-flesh-of-images ch. 2)

This makes Gauguin a philosophical witness to MP's anti-Christianization-of-flesh argument against Derrida and Michel Henry.

Visibility, Mono- vs. Polytheism

Nancy's typology (The Look of the Portrait, Visitation): monotheist religions give a god who is "present/concealed and presentifying himself concealed" — hence a painting of retreat, of the veil. Polytheist religions give gods whose plurality constitutes their visibility; the art of polytheism "provides a vision of the gods, while that of monotheism recalls the invisibility of God withdrawn into His unity."

Gauguin's detour through polytheist cultures (Tahitian + Greek + Japanese Buddhist) gives him access to this alternative visibility-structure. Christian incarnat presents withdrawal; Gauguin's opaque primitive flesh presents presence. This is what Carbone calls Gauguin's "deconstruction of the Christian 'flesh.'"

Paintings Carbone References

  • Vahine no te tiare (1891) — Tehamana's mouth "modelled by a sculptor"
  • Manao Tupapau (1892) — Tehamana as "perfect idol"; the spirit-of-the-dead keeps watch; Tehamana's hallucination present on canvas as indistinct from the sensible; implicit reference to Manet's Olympia
  • Eh quoi, tu es jalouse? (1892) — central figure based on Dionysos statue
  • Vision of the Sermon (La vision du sermon) (1888) — Breton peasants' hallucination present-and-indistinct from sensible
  • Calvaire breton (1889) — sacred figures evoking totem
  • Never-executed ("Miscellaneous Things"): "a woman turning into a statue, still remaining alive yet becoming an idol"

Writings by Gauguin

  • Noa Noa (published 1929, written 1891–93): manuscript of Polynesian observations; "sculptural form" language
  • Writings of a Savage (ed. Guérin, 1978; English trans. 1996): compendium
    • "Notes on Art at the Universal Exhibition" (1889): nature "artist"
    • "Huysmans and Redon" (1889): nature's "mysterious infinities"
    • "Notebook for Aline" (1892): "an artist must not copy nature but take the natural elements and create a new element"
    • "Miscellaneous Things" (1896–97): "translate a truth by a lie"; "truthfulness of falsehood"; "woman turning into a statue"; "the central figure will be a woman turning into a statue"
    • "The Catholic Church and Modern Times" (1897): theosophic-syncretic argument
  • L'esprit moderne et le catholicisme (unpublished manuscript, ed. Verdier in Walral-Richartz Jahrbuch XLVI, 1985)

Position on the Wiki

This entity page exists because Carbone's ch. 2 makes Gauguin a philosophical interlocutor for MP's ontology of flesh, parallel to the role Cézanne plays in *Eye and Mind* and Klee plays in the 1958–59 course notes + V&I. MP himself never wrote on Gauguin philosophically, but Carbone's argument is that their "mutual attention to the 'wild Being'" makes their purposes "spontaneously convergent." The entity page thus functions more as context for Carbone's argument than as biographical summary.

Connections

  • is the painterly witness of flesh-as-element — Gauguin's opaque skin restores skin-flesh unity against Christian veil-model
  • is the implicit ally of maurice-merleau-ponty on the flesh-of-the-world — against Christianization charges
  • performs visually what Carbone 2015 ch. 2 philosophically theorizes — "deconstruction of the Christian 'flesh'"
  • contrasts with paul-klee and paul-cezanne in being the primitivist painter of Carbone's triad — Cézanne seeks genesis through geological figure; Klee makes-visible through sign; Gauguin detours through stone to recover primitive sacrality
  • is foil to jacques-derrida on the Christian-semantics question
  • shares with maurice-merleau-ponty the "wild Being" theme (MP, V&I 170)
  • connects to wild-being — Gauguin's "primitive" is wild Being made painterly
  • connects to light-of-the-flesh — Gauguin's paintings "proclaim" (as Nietzsche does in MP's translation) "we no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn"

Sources

  • carbone-2015-flesh-of-images — ch. 2 "It Takes a Long Time to Become Wild: Gauguin According to Merleau-Ponty, Merleau-Ponty According to Gauguin," pp. 21–30. The only wiki source for Gauguin as philosophical interlocutor.

Secondary Sources Cited by Carbone

  • Kirk Varnedoe, "Gauguin," in "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art (MoMA 1984)
  • B. Dorival, "Sources of the Art of Gauguin from Java, Egypt and Ancient Greece," Burlington Magazine 577 (April 1951)
  • Jean-Luc Nancy, Visitation: Of Christian Painting; The Look of the Portrait (on Christian/polytheist visibility)
  • Georges Didi-Huberman, La Peinture incarnée (on incarnat / skin / chair)